In precisely two weeks' time Londoners get their chance to vote for a new Mayor. They won't, they'll vote for the old Mayor because Sadiq Khan is so far ahead in the polls he's effectively unstoppable. But we do know the 12 people who won't replace him, most of whom are destined to lose their £10,000 deposit, and we also know many of their policies. Here's my clickable summary.
The mainstream three
• Susan Hall(Conservative Party): Susan entered London politics in 2006 as a councillor for Hatch End and rose to become Leader of Harrow council, at least for a few months. Since 2019 she's been the leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly so she's well used to holding Sadiq to account across the chamber and is very much not a fan. She's on the right of her party so not a natural fit for the capital, more a champion for the outer suburbs. Top of her five point plan is to 'get a grip on crime', indeed her strapline is Safer with Susan. That means hiring more police officers, opening more safe spaces for women and bringing back borough-based policing. Her other key policy is to scrap the ULEZ extension (which a minority of drivers in Outer London are incandescent about) but not to scrap the entire zone (so Inner London diesel owners would remain shafted). When she says she wants to "cut the cost of travelling around London" she only means motorists, not those on public transport, and she's insistent Sadiq intends to bring in road pricing even though he's insistent he won't. She wants much cleaner air via alternative means and also more family homes rather than highrise flats. According to her website "my full manifesto will launch in early 2024" but here we are with a fortnight to go and a five point plan is all we have.
• Rob Blackie(Liberal Democrats): Rob's a digital marketeer from Herne Hill who recently turned 50 and is a long-term Liberal Democrat. His absolute number 1 priority is to tackle crime, specifically to 'Fix the Met' by improving conviction rates and bringing policing closer to the community. Rob was violently mugged in Vauxhall and says this is at the heart of his drive to focus on crime, although the attack actually took place in 2003 during Ken Livingstone's first term. On transport he wants a better plan for Outer London, greener river crossings out east, a tax on private planes, more Superloop routes and a reversal of the recent fares freeze. A lot of his pledges are more about lobbying and cajoling rather than action, perhaps recognising the limitations of the Mayoralty, but he does plan to increase the availability of allotments and introduce a London Wellbeing Strategy.
• Zoë Garbett(Green Party): Zoë works (non-clinically) in the NHS and has been a Green councillor in Dalston since 2022. She's now stepping up for the mayoralty and if past performance is anything to go by has a good chance of coming 3rd. Her manifesto stretches to an astonishing 134 pages - ten times longer than Rob's - and I've already brought you an analysis of her 100-odd transport policies. Elsewhere climate change would be at the heart of her plans, including setting up a Citizens’ Climate Assembly and creating ten major new parks. On housing she'd like to buy up private homes to boost council house supply, and on policing she'd withdraw support for use of live facial recognition and focus on reducing hit and run crime. A Green Mayor would also replace the GLA’s annual firework displays with drones and lasers, so watch BBC1 on New Year's Day 2028 to see if that's been achieved.
The one-track idealist
• Femy Amin(Animal Welfare Party): Femy wants "a fairer and compassionate world" not only for people but for animals and the environment too, including making a stand against the climate, biodiversity and health emergencies. Her policies include the creation of an Animal Welfare Committee within the London Assembly, the promotion of plant-based diets and of course "fostering a culture where speciesism is rejected". Vanessa Hudson said much the same thing three years ago and earned ½% of the vote.
The classic eccentric
• Count Binface: Hurrah for intergalactic space warrior Count Binface.
The egotistical entrepreneurs
• Natalie Campbell(Independent): Natalie threw her hat into the ring to be Conservative candidate for Mayor last year but wasn't successful so she's throwing her hat in as in independent instead. She's a former royal aide, the current Co-CEO of bottled water floggers Belu and wants to take "a zero B.S. approach to rebuilding London". She calls herself a social entrepreneur and wants an ambitious freelance buzz back on the streets of the capital, for example by repurposing 320 empty shops as community support centres.
• Tarun Ghulati(Independent): Tarun's a 63 year-old investment banker and currently the president and CEO of financial services platform Squared Watermelon. He launched his campaign while on a visit to India and says London shouldn't be governed on party lines, it needs a better investment ecosystem. He doesn't have a manifesto he has a vision statement, he claims "Londoners do not feel safe anywhere, anytime, anymore" and like every single candidate on the remainder of my list he wants to scrap ULEZ.
• Andreas Michli(Independent): Andreas is a health and fitness entrepreneur who runs a bodybuilding gym and is still peeved at being fined for holding a lockdown gathering at his home. Unsurprisingly his campaign slogan is Make London Strong and his top priorities are tackling knife crime and making police officers fitter. In other policies he wants platform doors at every tube station, a ban on the advertising of hyper-processed “plant-based” meat alternatives and, most bigheadedly, to "establish a Mayor of London radio channel through which I will speak directly to the people of London on a regular basis". I spotted his yellow van circling Piccadilly Circus the other day and thought blimey, there's an ego on the move.
The anti-woke warriors
• Howard Cox(Reform UK): Howard's an ex-Conservative voter who's long campaigned on behalf of motorists, bikers, van drivers, cabbies and truckers. He wants to Get London Moving and can distil his campaign into a six word soundbite - Scrap ULEZ, Cut crime, Ditch Khan. He wants police to be a lot more visible and an end to cash-grabbing anti-driver policies, indeed he says he'll refund every fine imposed since ULEZ was extended. His long term priority is move to "a popular common-sense prosperity that benefits all not just a vocal selfish minority", whatever that means, although the finer detail in his policies is very thin.
• Amy Gallagher(Social Democratic Party): Don't think Shirley Williams, think a psychiatric nurse concerned about identity politics and virtue signalling whose manifesto headline is Stand Up To Woke. Allow me to cut and paste a bit. "All Woke and DEI programmes will be stopped." "No more LGBTQ+ rainbow flags, BLM groups, ‘Maaate’ propaganda films." "End the war on cars resulting from authoritarian anti-travel ESG policies and Net Zero measures." "An outright ban on loudspeakers with full enforcement on public transport and in stations." "The SDP will de-politicise and enforce neutrality throughout TfL." "The Tube must run through the night, every night, to ensure women are able to work, commute and enjoy the city on a 24-hour basis without fearing for their safety." "The SDP know what a woman is." If the fourth plinth statues also make you angry, Amy wants your vote.
• Brian Rose(London Real Party): Besuited businessman Brian got 1% of the vote last time but since then has seen "the city I love, the place I call home descend into an Orwellian nightmare". I probably can't dig a bigger hole for him than to reproduce his opening paragraph. "The Brian For Mayor 2024 campaign aims to create a mass scale transformation in humanity into a fully empowered, conscious and cooperative species by promoting great ideas, strong policies and long term outcomes, while defending our rights to free speech and making London the financial capital of the world once more by making our capital the centre of the crypto, web3 and blockchain industries."
• Nick Scanlon(Britain First): Immigrants and Islamists are the important issue in Nick's patriotic bubble, on behalf of a party that considers Reform a bunch of wishy-washy liberals. I don't recognise the London he claims to be "a Third World cesspit where crime is rampant and radical Islamist
extremists dominate the streets!" but thousands will cast their vote here anyway.
Don't take my word for all this, do your own research, perhaps by clicking through or by reading the booklet being sent to every voter. You can download a full copy of that booklet here in case yours hasn't arrived yet. Dave Hill is also doing sterling work analysing the candidates and their policies over at On London.
And one final observation. Thus far the candidate with the sketchiest policies isn't any of the above, it's the incumbent Sadiq Khan, whose campaign materials all focus on what he's done (free school meals, frozen fares, building council houses etc) rather than plans for the future. That's because he's delayed publication of his manifesto until this morning, a fortnight before the polls open, and given he's going to win that's the body of pledges we should really all be focusing on.
I said I wasn't going to make a habit of this, and I'm not, but I've ticked off two more.
This is the northeast corner of London, from Hainault Country Park round to North Ockendon, annotated with all the places you can cross the boundary by car, train or public footpath. Discounting the M25, which forms a lot of the boundary hereabouts, only nine of the crossings are roads. That's how successful the Green Belt has been.
The black ticks are all the crossings I've crossed and the latest two are the pair just northeast of Noak Hill. I walked out of one and back in via the other. In the middle were unexpected llamas and a rollercoaster.
Noak Hill is London's northeasternmost village and not really on the way to anywhere, not unless you're going to Navestock, South Weald or Coxtie Green. I'd nearly walked out of it before but never quite got past the Orange Tree kennels and pigeon lofts on Church Road. This time I headed out northeast along Chequers Road, past where the Post Office used to be, aiming for the big bridge over the M25. The pavement gives out after Woodside Cottages, after which a stodgy verge suffices, but at least it's enough to keep you out of the road because this corner of London still has a 40mph speed limit. The road surface isn't good and is lightly potholed in places, which is either because Havering council have no interest in traffic heading into Essex or because we've had a budget-strangling government for the last 14 years. If you see a sick or injured deer, a poster advises, be sure to call Harold Wood Deer Aid on this mobile number.
Just before the motorway bridge are two farm gates. One is fronted by a black cruciform memorial commemorating Valeriu Catană (1975-2019), his tiny shrine bedecked with bright artificial flowers. The other is named 'Oakwood' and leads down to a long track which winds off into some woods. After I got home my research suggested Valeriu was a Romanian carpenter and confirmed that Oakwood is a naturist Sun Club offering a heated pool, boules, a croquet lawn and "dense foliage". Even a remote nondescript country lane has its secrets. The M25 is eight lanes wide at this point and on a bit of a climb, just north of the gantry which advises Chelmsford-bound traffic to join the inside lane. The entire motorway is inside the Greater London boundary, for sensible administrative reasons, but once the bridge touches down on the far side you've exited to Essex. Only Havering have put up a welcome sign.
I can't overemphasise how away-from-it-all this is, a world of horsey farms and scattered hamlets, and it was even quieter before the M25 turned up and carved straight across the fields. And yet there is a major tourist attraction here, one that charges £17.50 for admission, and that's Old Macdonald's Farm. As Brentwood's parents will know it's a petting zoo that's diversified into funfair rides and it fills a lengthy strip above the motorway. The easiest things to see from the car park are the Giant Snake Slide and the Doggy Dog Roller Coaster, although somewhere beyond are a Spider Tower, a JCB zone and The Thrilling Crazy Barn Ride. Top of the animal hierarchy are probably the horses, reindeer and llamas, but you also get pigs, goats, owls and walk-through wallabies for your money. Not being a toddler, or having one with me, I gave it a miss.
On the other side of Old Macdonald's Farm, which for me was a 5 minute walk, the road crosses Wright's Bridge. This is a crossing of the Weald Brook, a minor stream which flows south and eventually becomes the Ingrebourne, and which was once the boundary between Havering and Brentwood. But when the M25 came along it made sense to make that the boundary instead so you can no longer exit London simply by crossing the bridge. Instead you have to turn off down what looks like OMF's access road, and is barriered as such, but also has a sign saying Bridleway so I gave it a go. The only house, a short way down, is a heavily fortified detached monster called Angel Cottage which I assumed was another modern Essex hideaway. But no, it turns out to be an early 15th century timber framed hall with proper brick chimneystacks, admittedly much extended since, and was formerly an inn called the Old Angel. Another remote nondescript country lane, more secrets.
To cross back into London you first get a few glimpses of the Angel's back garden and then dip down between three bollards into a concrete subway beneath the motorway. Graffiti artists have ventured even this far, it appears, but their spraywork isn't up to much. Climbing back up the far side means following a footpath but very swiftly a stripe of tarmac swings in from the left and this definitely has a kerb. That's good, I thought, my journey back's not going to be the mudbath I'd originally feared. Instead it felt very much like walking down a slightly overgrown country lane with hedges to either side, and it turned out that's exactly what this used to be. Prior to the M25 two parallel roads bore off from Noak Hill but they only had money for one bridge so Chequers Lane (exit 1) got that and Wrightsbridge Road (exit 2) was sacrificed to become a public footpath instead. Old Macdonalds Farm has been slotted in beside the link road added on the Essex side.
The best part of this path was how quiet it was, occasional birdsong excepted. Normally I'm on my guard in this part of Havering for locals out walking lively dogs but I had confidence here I'd not be bumping into anyone, a feeling confirmed by the sight of several fallow deer in the adjacent fields. My passage repeatedly interrupted their grazing, first causing them to look up and then to scarper quietly towards the safety of some overhanging canopy. Deer often find their way onto outlying housing estates in these parts but rarely have I seen groups of ten, thirty and in one case over fifty quietly biding their time in plain sight.
The track eventually reaches a former crossroads where a moss-topped fingerpost points off down multiple paths. You could head back to Noak Hill but I plumped for footpath 278 to Dagnam Park, which is very much the backway into one of Havering's finest recreational spaces. This was once the estate of Dagnams, the manor house whose land was compulsory purchased in the 1940s to create the massive Harold Hill council estate, but this outlying chunk was preserved as parkland and it's delightful. Here I discovered the remains of the old stable block, an avenue of yew trees leading to two white gateposts, the footprint of the former mansion picked out on a lawn, a large pond once brimming with perch, multiple information boards, a Humphrey Repton landscape, a swathe of ancient woodland and of course several more deer.
Quite frankly I should have written about Dagnam Park instead because that's the most interesting thing out here, but alas I've already written multiple less relevant paragraphs and there isn't time. This is why I will never engage in a series called Exiting Greater London In Every Possible Location because it would be a truly irrelevant disappointment, but that's two more ticked off and if you're very unlucky I'll come back one day and do Noak Hill's other five.
Whitehall is one of the most famous and historic streets in London but has been tucked away on the cheap-to-middling side of the Monopoly board, perhaps because it's not a real estate hotspot. Instead it's an administrative hub for the highest echelons of government, the focus of our Remembrance commemorations and a conduit for protest, as well as the site of what was once the world's largest royal palace. As a street it's longer than it used to be but shorter than you probably think it is, terminating short of Parliament Square at the southern end. Let's start off instead at Trafalgar Square, the pink set's focal point, and explore the less bureaucratic end first.
Whitehall kicks off with a Pret A Manger and swiftly settles into catering mostly for tourists. The first gift shop is called Memento London, a souvenir-packed honeytrap where punters are lured inside by the sight of Paddington Bear sitting on the roof of a Mini. Nextdoor is a 'magical' emporium which sells Hufflepuff scarves and Triwizard cups, plus knock-off goods from other fantasy franchises, and if you pause to window-shop a bloke in a red beanie will walk over and ask if you fancy a ride on an open-top tour bus. For higher level contemporary culture try opposite at the Trafalgar Theatre (originally the Whitehall) which has reverted to offering a diet of celeb-fronted plays now that Jersey Boys has finally vacated.
Here too are several pubs that sightseeing families might plausibly drift into, some of which are converted banks so not as traditional as they appear. I checked their menus for fish and chips and can confirm it costs £16.50 at Walkers, £17.45 at the Silver Cross, £18.50 at The Horse & Guardsman and £19.50 at The Old Shades and The Clarence, so best shop around. In particular try not to be tempted inside Café De Royale because it's not a nice place for a cuppa and a sitdown, more a candy bazaar flogging Pop Tarts and Cheetos whose sole nod to hot drinks is a machine on the counter dispensing £3.99 lattes. I'm pleased to say its interior was doggedly empty.
The first sidestreet is called Great Scotland Yard, this the location of the Metropolitan Police's first HQ. The name has followed to each subsequent site, the first being New Scotland Yard on the Victoria Embankment (1890), then New Scotland Yard in Victoria (1967), then back to the Victoria Embankment again (2016). Whitehall remains a sensitive zone, so much so that on my visit multiple police vans were parked up in the middle of the road, sharpshooters were positioned in many a doorway and several groups of gloved officers were carefully checking every single lamppost and junction box against a prescribed list in a red folder. Given that I was wandering around taking multiple photos and scribbling down notes, I'm relieved to have got away unchallenged.
And then the government buildings start. First up is the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, last year's spin-off from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, most of which remains in the building behind as the Department for Business and Trade. If nothing else it's keeping the signwriters busy. Across the road are the Admiralty Buildings, another labyrinthine civil service warren, with 26 Whitehall being where Nelson's body rested on the night before his funeral. A lot of the buildings here present an ornate and overprotective frontage to the street, with very little clue as to which policies are being enacted behind the spikes and bomb-proof drapes.
Horseguards is the chief magnet for tourists hereabouts, specifically the two large sentry boxes to either side of the entrance to the parade ground. Onlookers take it in turns to pause with cameras in front of the mounted soldier with the funny hat, then ideally stand alongside, undeterred by signs warning that Horses May Kick Or Bite. The punters' big grins are in sharp contrast to the poor sod on his saddle, who can't have imagined on signing up that deadpan performance for a TikTok audience would be the central premise of his job. Were his helmet less obstructive he'd spend his entire duty staring at the two buildings opposite, either side of Horseguards Avenue, which appropriately for Monopoly purposes turn out to be a hotel and a house.
Hotel:The Old War Office
They didn't call the hotel the Old War Office because that would be commercial suicide, instead rechristening it The OWO. Once the domain of Kitchener and Churchill. it re-opened last autumn after an eight year refit with one half now containing 85 luxury residences for multimillionaires in need of a showy London pad. The remainder comprises 120 ultra-spacious hotel suites starting at £879 a night, plus a restaurant with a Michelin starred chef and a spa with a "gamechanging holistic wellness offering". This sumptuous internal rearrangement has been paid for by a group of Singaporean investors under the 'Raffles' brand, and I mention all this in case next time you're protesting down Whitehall you want to vent your righteous fury at the obscenely rich as well just as the government.
House:The Banqueting House
The Banqueting House is the sole surviving (visible) remnant of the Palace of Whitehall, designed in full-on classical style by Inigo Jones in 1622. It has a Rubens ceiling, a Flemish balustrade and an upper window through which Charles I walked just before being beheaded. It's also very closed at the moment pending renovation so hopefully you've already been inside. The original palace was Henry VIII's creation, a sprawling collection of royal buildings between here and the Thames, and you can probably guess what colour it started out given its name. Most of the palace burnt to the ground over two days in 1698 after a washerwoman left some wet linen too close to a charcoal burner, the Banqueting House being saved after adjacent buildings were frantically knocked down as a fire break. Whitehall once terminated here at an ornate archway called the Holbein Gate, beyond which it became a much narrower thoroughfare called The Street, before that too was demolished in 1759 to improve the flow of traffic.
Continuing south, back in the present day, the government buildings now come thick and fast. First the Scottish Office and the Welsh Office (the former significantly larger), then the Orwellian bulwark of the Ministry of Defence with its protective stripe of fenced-off lawn to either side. Three heroes of WW2 are commemorated with statues out front - that's Monty, Alan and Slim - and are highly unlikely to be joined by any heroes of WW3 because this spot is ground zero for instant vaporisation. The Cabinet Office has less oppressive premises across the road, although still with armed police on guard at unmarked doors and paparazzi waiting out front hoping to capture the guilty face of an emerging minister. I merely caught a glimpse of the scrawled notes under the arm of a senior civil servant.
The memorial in the middle of the street commemorates The Women of WW2 and takes the form of a bronze monolith bearing a coat-rack hung with evocative uniforms. It's been here since 2005, is hollow to save money and was part funded by Baroness Boothroyd's winnings on the gameshow Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The next sideroad is Downing Street, now incredibly well fortified, with a gazebo for the checking of passes on the far side of a screen of black railings. Look closely and you'll see a few remnants of the red paint someone hurled at a recent demonstration, making absolutely no impact whatsoever on government policy. We have just two buildings and a pylon of Portland Stone to go.
The Cenotaph was originally made from wood and plaster because it was intended to be temporary, but was so widely admired that Lutyens designed a permanent structure to replace it. Medals, uniforms and duffel coats have been worn here annually since 1920. The peculiarly palatial edifice opposite, set back from the road, is Richmond House which was built in 1987 to house the Department of Health. More recently it's been pencilled in as the site for a temporary Commons chamber while the Palace of Westminster undergoes urgent repairs, but a heads-in-the-sand approach has so far reprieved the building. And this is where Whitehall unexpectedly terminates, the last 100m down to Parliament Square being called Parliament Street instead. For confirmation see the street sign outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, partway down the balustrade...
...which thankfully saves me from writing two more paragraphs.
Once their leaves come out, trees are green until the autumn. But they're never as brilliantly green as they are in early spring when the leaves are still young. The canopy is a beautiful burst of light greens, a mix of subtle tones of jade and emerald. Here's the view from Richmond Hill looking proper lush.
But it never lasts. As the weeks go by the greens get inexorably darker and well before summer they're all just identikit deep green, those fresh contrasts lost. The shift to autumn's also fabulous, don't get me wrong, but nothing beats the first flush of green we get to enjoy in April.
It's all to do with chlorophyll. In young leaves the chloroplasts are still developing so contain less green pigment and the leaves tend to be lighter. It's also compounded by maturity. As new leaves grow they begin making additional pigments that darken the foliage, and they also thicken as they develop waxy layers that can dim the green hue.
Spring's bright burst is brief and gone too soon. Enjoy the greens while you can.
Farrow and Ball paint colours: Arsenic, Ball Green, Bancha, Beverly, Breakfast Room Green, Calke Green, Card Room Green, Carriage Green, Chappell Green, Chine Green, Churlish Green, Cooking Apple, Danish Lawn, Duck Green, Folly Green, Eddy, Emerald Green, Green Ground, Green Smoke, Green Stone, Grove Green, Hog Plum, Lichen, Mere Green, Minster Green, Monkey Puzzle, Olive, Palm, Pea Green, Pond Green, Raw Tomatillo, Sap Green, Saxon Green, Studio Green, Suffield Green, Sutcliffe Green, Teresa's Green, Tunsgate Green, Verdigris Green, Vert de Terre, Vitty Green, Whirlybird, Yeabridge Green
MPs: Damian Green, Chris Green, Caroline Lucas, Lilian Greenwood, Kate Green, Margaret Greenwood, Sarah Green
Tube stations: Bethnal Green, Bounds Green, Golders Green, Greenford, Green Park, Kensal Green, North Greenwich, Parsons Green, Stepney Green, Turnham Green, Willesden Green, Wood Green Former names: Acton Green, Croxley Green, Walham Green Other London stations: Drayton Green, Edmonton Green, Greenwich, Harringay Green Lanes, Hither Green, Palmers Green, Slade Green, South Greenford Outside London: Acocks Green, Barnt Green, Borough Green and Wrotham, Broad Green, Dunton Green, Green Lane, Green Road, Greenbank, Greenfaulds, Greenfield, Greenhithe, Greenock Central, Greenock West, Gretna Green, Hall Green, Heald Green, Hough Green, Hurst Green, Langley Green, Lea Green, Marston Green, Seer Green and Jordans, Town Green, Welham Green, Wylde Green
Musicians: Al, Cee Lo, Day, Gartside, Jelly, Norman Baum, Professor Music: Barwick, Door, Grass of Home, Onions, Tambourine
London walks: Jubilee Greenway, Green Chain, Green Link, Dollis Valley Greenwalk
Html codes: Aquamarine #7FFFD4, Eucalyptus #5F8575, Jade #00A36C, Lincoln Green #478778, Malachite #0BDA51, Olive Green #808000, Pear #C9CC3F, Pistachio #93C572, Sea Green #2E8B57, Spring Green #00FF7F, Teal #008080, Verdigris #40B5AD
London's Millennium Greens: Aberfeldy, Albion, Alexandra, Chadwell, Cricklewood, New Southgate, Waterloo, Robin Hood
Cities/towns with Green Belts: Bath/Bristol, Birmingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Burton upon Trent, Cambridge, Derby/Nottingham, Gloucester, Lancaster, Leeds/Sheffield, London, Liverpool/Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Stoke-on-Trent, York
National flags that are at least 40% green: Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Guyana, Madagascar, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Togo, Turkmenistan, Zambia
Places in London according to the Ordnance Survey: Acton Green, Ardleigh Green, Bell Green, Berry's Green, Bethnal Green, Bounds Green, Broad Green, Brook Green, Chingford Green, Colham Green, Fortis Green, Golders Green, Green Street Green, Greenford, Greenhill, Greenwich, Hither Green, Horns Green, Kensal Green, Leaves Green, Newyears Green, North Greenwich, Norwood Green, Palmers Green, Parsons Green, Pinner Green, Rowley Green, Rush Green, Slade Green, Strand on the Green, Stroud Green, Walham Green, West Green, Westbourne Green, Wood Green, Woodcote Green, Woodford Green
Salt and vinegar: Walkers, Sainsburys, Tesco, Aldi, Asda, Morrisons Cheese and Onion: Golden Wonder, Smith's, Hula Hoops, McCoys Green Onion: Lay's Chicken: Smiths (Australia)
Fictional: Green Gables, Green Ginger, Green Hornet, Jolly Green Giant, Dock Green, Lieutenant Green, Reverend Green, Camberwick Green
Green lines: District, Waterloo & City, Trams, Suffragette, 701, 724, 755, 757
The Battle of Barnet, one of the key turning points of the Wars of the Roses, took place on 14th April 1471. A 553rd anniversary's not particularly major but unfortunately I missed the 550th, as did most of the population of Barnet due to lockdown issues. Also the battle took place on a foggy Sunday morning, so at least I've got the day of the week right, although it was also Easter Day so I've missed out there.
Much of the late 15th century was a bloody tussle between two warring dynasties, the Houses of Lancaster and York, and the Battle of Barnet was the key moment when the white rose finally triumphed over the red. Beforehand Henry VI was enjoying his second spell as king but afterwards Edward IV was back on the throne for his second go, this very much a peak ping pong moment in the history of the English monarchy. And it all took place at the top of the Northern line, a short walk past The Spires shopping centre, although precisely where it happened is a hotly debated topic and the question at the heart of today's post.
The best place to go for answers is probably Barnet Museum, a volunteer-run repository of wonders on Wood Street. There's no aspect of local history its members haven't diligently researched, displayed and brought to publication, with the 1471 battle meriting pride of place in the ground floor gallery. Here are helmets, shields and battlefield models, plus a large watercolour painting of all the main players, plus did you know that three kings of England were in Barnet that day (the future Richard III had rocked up to his first major military engagement). The curators are terribly chuffed to have the seal of the Earl of Warwick, aka the Kingmaker, on temporary display on loan from the British Museum. He'd long been the strategic mastermind behind the Wars of the Roses but had recently made the mistake of switching sides and at Barnet the victorious Yorkists slew him dead.
You can tell it's anniversary month in Barnet because Barnet Museum volunteers have hung almost 100 heraldic banners from the lampposts up Barnet Hill and the High Street, even inside The Spires. They created the set on waterproof cotton in readiness for the 550th, each representing a noble family that turned up to fight, and with typical attention to detail the Lancastrians hang on one side of the road and the Yorkists on the other. Heraldry proved unexpectedly crucial that day in 1471 as Lancastrian fighters mistook the Earl of Oxford's "star with rays" badge for Edward's IV's "sun in splendour" and started firing down arrows on their own side. If there's a lesson to be learned from the Battle of Barnet it's never to launch an offensive in thick fog.
The final banner has been hung at the top of the high street by Pizza Express, which is also where Hadley Green starts. This is Probable Battlesite Number 1, indeed it's where English Heritage decided the battle was fought was when they published a full report in 1995 [report][map]. Contemporary chronicles refer to "a broad green right beside the St Alban's high road" and Hadley Green still fits that description, a substantial triangle of sometimes-squishy grass criss-crossed by minor drainage channels. A lot of large houses have since nibbled away at the perimeter but there's still plenty of room to imagine two armies facing off against each other, perhaps even Edward IV standing beside the bus stop or the duckpond.
Chroniclers specifically mentioned a 'hedge-syde' to the west of the main road behind which the Earl of Oxford's men massed before combat. An ancient hedgerow still exists in the appropriate location, now surrounded by the 18 holes of Old Fold Golf Club, and a lot of academic supposition has drawn the conclusion that this therefore nails down the site. A public footpath crosses the golf course supposedly providing access to the elusive hedge, although the blue posts are quite hard to follow and yesterday the fairways were weekend-busy with flying balls so I gave it a miss. The moated manor house that existed here in 1471 is long gone but the moat survives and provides a unique water hazard surrounding the 18th green.
The most prominent memorial to the Battle of Barnet is an obelisk called the Hadley Highstone. It was erected by Sir Jeremy Sambrook in 1740, this 299 years after the battle proving that commemorating peculiar anniversaries is nothing new. It sits on a freshly-mown triangle of grass at the northern end of the village in the fork where the roads from St Albans and Potters Bar converge. This is Probable Battlesite Number 2, at least according to the Battlefields Trust who place the Lancastrian frontline parallel to the A1000 passing directly through the obelisk [map]. This was later in the battle, because in the foggy conditions the two opposing flanks had rotatedsomewhat, adding to the general confusion regarding who was precisely where.
If the Lancastrians were up by the road then the Yorkists would have down in the valley, or at least on the slopes of a depression containing the Monken Mead Brook. Today the fledgling stream is alas confined to private farmland so off limits, but the dip can be seen by following a short broad track down the side of Greenacre Close. Stand by the metal gate, just past the Girl Guide hut, and you can look out over an open field towards a low line of trees and a bank of pasture on the far side. At present it's a dazzling shade of yellow, i.e. proper peak attractive, although somewhat tarnished by the presence of a bright pink portaloo under the nearest tree. Back in the day all of this would have been heathland on the edge of the Enfield Chase royal hunting ground, perhaps flecked by the bodies of the Duke of Exeter's men. They still call the foot of the valley Dead Man's Bottom.
Probable Battlesite Number 3 lies fully to the north of the Highstone in the vicinity of Kitt's End Road. This quiet lane was the main route between London and St Albans at the time of the battle, indeed right up to the 1820s when a new more direct road branched off from Barnet instead. I walked to the farm on the second bend, part of the longstanding medieval hamlet of Kitt's End, and stared out across a much broader arable landscape towards the mega roundabout at South Mimms. By leaving Hadley I was now firmly in Hertfordshire, indeed there's a distinct possibility that the only registered battlefield in London isn't actually in London at all, not quite.
Much of the land here is covered by Wrotham Park, the private estate of a huge 18th century country house built and still owned by the Byng family. This gets used a lot for corporate hospitality events, wedding receptions and as a filming location, while to the south is a landscaped business park you won't be getting access to either. Edward IV had a chapel built somewhere here to commemorate his victory, although archaeologists have yet to unearth convincing evidence of precisely where it was, or indeed of precisely anything [report]. All that's known is that red faced white in the fog somewhere north of Barnet, the two sides off balance and increasingly confused, and that the tide of English history turned here as one king vanquished another.
» City guide Paul Baker runs regular walks in Barnet, including an anniversary battlefield tour this morning at 11am.
» The Barnet Medieval Festival is due to return on the weekend of 8th-9th June 2024 at Byng Road playing fields.
» Barnet Museum is open five afternoons a week (not Monday or Friday) and also on Saturday mornings from 10.30am. Admission is free and the welcome is warm. Before you leave make sure you pick up a Barnet 1471 leaflet (How the Battle of Barnet fits into the modern landscape) and then you too can try and discover where it might have been fought.
It's a lovely day in the capital so I hope you're out enjoying the unseasonable warmth rather than wasting your time reading today's post. That's because it's about journeys through consecutively numbered postcode districts, an issue of no practical use whatsoever.
Here's an approximate schematic of the postcodedistricts in central London.
WC1 and WC2 cover the West End and EC1-EC4 are essentially the City.
WC: The dividing line between WC1 and WC2 roughly follows the alignment of New Oxford Street and High Holborn. To walk from WC1 to WC2 is as simple as crossing the road outside Holborn station. EC: The triple point between EC1, EC2 and EC4 is just outside St Paul's station. To walk the EC postcode districts consecutively simply walk from there along Cheapside and then do a circuit of Bank junction, which is the EC2, EC3 and EC4 triple point.
It's quick and easy to walk the districts of WC and EC consecutively. As a spoiler, these are the only London postcode areas you can walk consecutively, so you can stop reading here.
Things get more awkward in W, NW, N, E, SE and SW, the "compass point" districts of the London postal district. That's because they were numbered alphabetically rather than geographically, so the chances of consecutive numbered districts being adjacent is quite low.
E1, E2 and E3 are next to each other, that's Whitechapel (the Head Office), then Bethnal Green, then Bow. But E4 is Chingford which is nowhere near and so the sequence collapses.
It goes wrong either side because E7 Forest Gate isn't near E8 and E13 Plaistow doesn't quite touch E12. As a spoiler 'five' is the maximum chain length anywhere in the London postcode district, so you can stop reading here.
W: W9 Maida Hill → W10 North Kensington → W11 Notting Hill → W12 Shepherds Bush (4) NW: NW2 Cricklewood → NW3 Hampstead and NW9 The Hyde → NW10 Willesden (2) N: N10 Muswell Hill → N11 New Southgate → N12 North Finchley (3) SE: SE21 Dulwich → SE22 East Dulwich → SE23 Forest Hill (3) SW: SW16 Streatham → SW17 Tooting → SW18 Wandsworth → SW19 Wimbledon → SW20 West Wimbledon (5)
The NW postcode area is particularly rubbish for consecutive adjacent areas. The SW postcode area manages another chain of 5, but that's still not very good.
Things pick up again in the postcode areas covering outer London. Here's RM for Romford.
It all goes wrong here because RM11 Hornchurch isn't near RM10. That's a shame because what follows is a perfect run from RM11 to RM18 Tilbury, although we've gone outside London by this point. That said, RM1 to RM10 is actually the longest consecutive sequence anywhere in London, so you can stop reading here.
I told you RM was long - none of the other postcode areas in London get past six. Also CR is particularly rubbish because none of its nine districts adjoin consecutively anywhere.
If we allow sequences of London postcode districts that go beyond London we can do much better.
This is because most provincial postcode districts are numbered geographically rather than alphabetically. TW is particularly impressive, suggesting that whoever numbered the districts had a consecutive sequence in mind. Only the leap from TW6 Heathrow to TW7 Isleworth breaks the chain. That said, TW7 to TW20 is easily the longest consecutive sequence of postcode districts starting anywhere in London, so you can stop reading here.
But if we ignore the letters and just look at the numbers, we can do 20.
That's the UB sequence from UB1 to UB6, a cunning W7 link through Hanwell and then TW8 all the way to TW20.
This is a long spiralling chain and cannot be beaten. If you have nothing better to do this weekend you could try to follow it from Southall to Egham. The 195 bus from Southall to Hayes ticks off the first four quite nicely, and the 285 from Teddington to Feltham does a nice job of TW11 to TW14. But hopefully you stopped reading a long time ago because it's a lovely day and you're out enjoying the unseasonable warmth.
We're not due another tube map until August when the Overground lines get their own names. There's no point replacing paper maps and posters on platforms until then. But the online map on the TfL website is another matter and is often updated between print runs to reflect the latest changes. Indeed a new tube map pdf slipped out unheralded at the end of March and something marvellous has happened. Two daggers have been culled.
This is how the tangle of orange spaghetti in the Hackney area looked before.
It's been like this since the lines out of Liverpool Street joined the Overground in 2015, splitting into two branches north of Hackney Downs. The red daggers first appeared a year later to point out the important fact that half the trains don't stop at Cambridge Heath or London Fields. If you want to board/alight at these stations you need a train via Seven Sisters, not a train on the Chingford branch. And rather than explaining this, TfL stuck two unlabelled daggers on the map and invited users to work this out for themselves.
A better solution would have been to display the two lines separately, splitting north of Bethnal Green rather than north of London Fields. It would then have been patently obvious, even to someone with no grasp of English, that Cambridge Heath and London Fields were served by only some of the trains. I mentioned this way back in 2016, citing the sudden tangle of orange as the reason it probably hadn't been done ("We could show this on the map by splitting the lines, but it's so squished now there isn't room.") Now finally, just before the lines get new colours, the designers have decided to make the split. It means an extra blob and longer lines but hurrah, the intention is so much clearer.
Red daggers were introduced to the tube map in June 2016 to depict issues TfL thought were important but didn't have space to tell you. Blue daggers still got a full explanation in the key ('Holland Park - Station closed until early August 2016') but red daggers weren't similarly listed. Instead the legend said 'services for these stations are subject to variation' and invited you to search "TfL stations" for further information. This was plainly a ridiculous idea, directing customers off on a digital goose chase with no guarantee of success, so has obviously continued in every iteration of the tube map since.
More recently the instructions for red daggers changed from search "TfL stations" to visit tfl.com/plan-a-journey. This is increasingly TfL's answer to everything - when in doubt, plan a journey and follow the solution we serve up. But it doesn't explain what the underlying issue is, nor encourage independent travel, merely expects people to use a digital crutch every time. And given that one of the red daggers is at Liverpool Street, the busiest railway station in the country, this ambiguous approach isn't exactly helpful.
† Turnham Green: Piccadilly line trains sometimes stop
† Paddington: Elizabeth line trains sometimes serve the mainline platforms
† Liverpool Street: Elizabeth line trains sometimes serve the mainline platforms
† Cambridge Heath: Trains to/from Chingford don't stop
† London Fields: Trains to/from Chingford don't stop
† West India Quay: Trains from Bank don't stop
† Emerson Park: (not sure, maybe no trains after 10pm)
But the red daggers at Cambridge Heath and London Fields have now been removed, hurrah, reducing the total to just five. And I'd like to argue that the target should be zero - all daggers should be blue and fully explained or not on the map at all.
One problem with Target Zero is the limited amount of space alongside the tube map to explain what the daggers mean. This used to be easier when the key was on the map itself, but the sequential introduction of trams and Thameslink has scuppered that and now takes up most of the available space. It's going to get even more cramped in August when the key needs to include six Overground lines instead of one, so really the only way to deal with the red daggers is to explain them more concisely or not to include them at all.
Turnham Green's red dagger wouldn't be needed if the Piccadilly/District interchange blobs were removed, because these only apply before 7am and after 10.30pm, not when the vast majority of most people travel. Paddington and Liverpool Street's daggers should either be tied to the Elizabeth line and clarified or removed altogether. West India Quay's dagger issue could be solved by drawing the Poplar junction differently, but this would be such a mess (see on-train maps) that it should never be inflicted on the tube map. And Emerson Park is TfL's least used station so its relatively minor timetabling issue could, indeed should, be easily ignored.
There is precedent for deleting red daggers. Camden Town used to have one because it was exit only on Sunday afternoons, then this was no longer deemed important enough to mention and the dagger disappeared. We should get rid of the rest, or take the time to explain them properly, because expecting punters to search online is a pointless distraction and an utter waste of effort. Solving the Cambridge Heath/London Fields problem graphically shows how well this can be done.
While I was in Enfield, heading away from the power station, I decided to depart across Sewardstone Marsh. Why exit the dull way when you can cross the Lea and walk through a minor Essex village? The riverside path passed nosey ponies and a pumping station and crossed three footbridges of various ages. And halfway across the third of these, which is the Cattlegate Footbridge, I realised I was exiting Greater London somewhere I'd never exited the capital before.
So I wondered how many ways there are to exit the capital, how many paths and tracks and roads and railways in total around the periphery. A footpath here, more footpaths further upriver, and goodness knows how many more around 200 miles or so of boundary. Some ways out are big and obvious like the A10 or the Central line or Woodford High Road, but others are just tiny tracks in woods or paths across fields, not to mention minor bridges across a river.
More to the point, would it be possible to cross them all? I must have crossed the Greater London boundary in more locations than the average person, so how much of a task would it be to cross the rest? With the Cattlegate Footbridge now ticked off, could I become the first person to do them all?
I got a map out and just considered crossings of the boundary in the London borough of Enfield. Bridge✔ bridge✔ bridge✔ M25✔ towpath✔ railway✔ High Street✔ roof of tunnel✔ railway✔ A10✔ aqueduct✔ footpath✔ country lane✔ was a strong start. But then came several subways under the M25 I'd never tackled, and on closer inspection there was another minor subway I'd missed back in Waltham Cross which might or might not have been private, and did a path criss-crossing the boundary count as one or several, and this was actually a lot more complicated than it looked.
Also on closer inspection I had crossed Cattlegate Footbridge before because it's part of London Loop section 18, which I'd originally assumed had crossed the footbridge to the north. I'd even included a photo of it on the blog, this being 10 years ago, and then forgotten about it... so there was now another exit from the capital I hadn't actually crossed. If just Enfield is this complicated, I thought, I don't think I'll bother.
I still reckon I've crossed the Greater London boundary in far more places than most people ever have, including some ridiculously unimportant footpaths in Havering, Hillingdon and Bromley. But I won't be deliberately trying to do the rest, nor even cataloguing them, because life's too short. Also I'd have ended up visiting lots and lots of quite dull places, like Sewardstone, and then probably writing about them and nobody wants that. A lucky escape for all of us, I think.
While I was in Willesden, round the back of Taylors Lane Power Station, I came across this oddly-named cul-de-sac. That's an odd name for a cul-de-sac, I thought. Why was Energen Close named after a private company?
I assumed Energen might have been something to do with the power station, or a company who owned something that used to be here, probably in the 1980s/1990s judging by the age of the housing. Then I remembered the name of the electricity company was actually Powergen, not Energen, although they were founded in 1989 so they hit the time bracket perfectly. Energen was merely a company that made crispbreads for dieters and small light rolls for postwar ladies, so I was clearly on completely the wrong track.
I did some Googling, but it wasn't very helpful because Energen Close was the site of a tragic shooting in 2020 and a lot of the results were about that. So I did what I normally do next and checked the old maps on the National Library of Scotland website... and what do you know this genuinely was the site of the factory that made Energen bread rolls! The map showed a large building labelled Energen Works (Food Products), the date being 1955, and further research then revealed that the company had been up and running since 1929.
Which got me wondering if there are any other residential streets in London named after private companies originally based there.
» Not streets on industrial estates, nor access roads to factories, but places people actually live.
» Not streets coincidentally named after companies, like Dunelm Grove or Cadbury Close.
» Not streets thematically named after businesses based elsewhere.
» Not companies named after streets but streets named after companies, most likely streets on the sites of things.
The square after Pall Mall on the Monopoly board is theElectric Company. It would be too overfamiliar to visit Tate Modern and Battersea Power Station, plus neither of them still generate electricity, so I'm not going there. Instead I've identified the five largest power stations in the capital ranked by capacity in megawatts. All are large buildings with tall chimneys so stand out in their locality, and you might like to see if you can guess where they are before reading further.
n.b. The government provides an annual list of major power producer power stations as part of the Digest of UK Energy Statistics, or DUKES for short, so I've used their data. There are only nine such power stations in Greater London because belching fuel and major centres of population no longer mix.
London's biggest power stations
1) Enfield Power Station(408 MW) Type: Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Fuel: Natural Gas Location: Brancroft Way, Brimsdown EN3 7PL Commissioned: 1999
This is a post-Thatcherite pioneer, one of the first commercial projects specifically designed to supply electricity into the UK electricity pool. It was developed by a consortium of American companies who decided the arse end of Enfield was the ideal place to plonk a single shaft CCGT steam turbine and heat recovery steam generator. They hid it well. Enfield Power Station squats beyond the railway at the far end of a industrial estate beside the River Lea and a whopping reservoir. You might have clocked it from the train, you could have traipsed past it up a lonely towpath, but unless you live at Enfield Lock or work nearby in a big shed wearing a hairnet it's likely passed you by.
I'd never explored Brimsdown properly before, other than passing by on the 491 bus and thinking how unpretty it all looked. This side of the railway is a full-on sprawling workplace plied by vans and trucks - one of London's largest Strategic Industrial Locations - because mass manufacturing activity has to take place somewhere. Brancroft Road bears off by the Driving Test Centre (for lorries rather than cars) and curves round past thick hedgerows towards a puffy chimney. The powerstation is functional rather than attractive, a series of pipes and boxes rather than one big building, and looks like it would be relatively simple to disassemble. Three large silos feed the beast, white steam issues from multiple vents and the chimney has all the charm of a vacuum cleaner nozzle. No entry. No drones. Danger of death.
Across the road is one of Greggs 14 UK bakery sites, churning out melts, vegan sausage rolls and most recently pizza, behind that is a vast shed dispensing M&S Food and behind that the Warburtons bakery which feeds London and the southeast. Observing some of the Greggs employees sat out front at tables in the shadow of the power station, it did look like their employer had provided them with bags of pastry treats for breaktime consumption. I then followed an unlikely-looking public footpath which squeezed between the foot of the chimney and Brimsdown substation, an electricjungle of metal frames, spiky ceramics and thrumming coils. The alleyway eventually emerged in a backwoods recreation ground where multiple chains of pylons lead off to feed electricity up and down the Lea Valley, perhaps even powering the device you're reading this on. It all has an eerie beauty, but you'd never know.
2) Taylors Lane Power Station(132 MW) Type: Open Cycle Gas Turbine Fuel: Diesel/Gas Oil Location: Leicester Road, Willesden NW10 8JP Commissioned: 1979
Who'd have guessed that London's second largest electricity generator was inside the North Circular? Only just... up Neasden way not far from IKEA and the Hindu temple... but nowhere you'd build a power station today. Like Brimsdown it's located on the footprint of a former coal-fired station, and like Brimsdown it's operated by the same state-owned German multinational. They're Uniper, the world's largest energy company by revenue, whose portfolio also includes Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the Isle of Grain and three nuclear plants in Sweden. Taylors Lane is one of their smaller operations.
It ain't pretty, more a row of concrete shields with four white boxes stacked on top and two drab brown chimneys rising alongside. It looks slightly prettier viewed from Brentfield Open Space through a screen of leaves, and substantially less appealing from the footpath running alongside the adjacent electricity substation. Here I found half a sofa cushion and a abandoned microwave, plus an ageing sign warning DANGER 132,000 VOLTS on a fence protecting another spiky transformer menagerie. And this time people actually live close by, some in Edwardian terraces probably erected to house the original workers and others in postwar flats built after the air hereabouts got a lot cleaner. Incongruous as anything.
3) Riverside Resource Recovery(80 MW) Type: Bioenergy Fuel: Municipal Solid Waste Location: Norman Road, Belvedere DA17 6JY Commissioned: 2011
This one, by contrast, is as far away from a resident population as Ken Livingstone could manage. Its swooshing silhouette was tucked away on the Thames estuary in Bexley, just downstream from Crossness pumping station on the Erith Marshes. The closest businesses are mostly supermarket distribution centres and storage solutions, and nobody across the river at Ford Dagenham is going to complain either. Try not to confuse it with the similarly futuristic Crossness Sewage Incinerator nextdoor, whose purpose is to combust raw sludge cake at temperatures up to 950°C and whose chimney is less of a grey swirl, more of a grey bulge.
The Riverside Resource Recovery Facility instead exists to turn waste into electricity via a super-heated air-cooled process. It merrily munches through over three quarters of a million tonnes of London's waste per annum, the majority of which arrives by barge and is unloaded at the adjacent pier via a strikingly orange row of cranes. Its original purpose was to allow the closure of the landfill site downriver at Mucking, and a sign of its continuing success is that it's about to be expanded into a building called Riverside 2 which'll be able to process another 650,000 tonnes of non-recyclables. Unless you're heading down the Thames yourself, it's very much out of sight out of mind.
4) Edmonton EcoPark(58 MW) Type: Bioenergy Fuel: Municipal Solid Waste Location: Advent Way, Meridian Water N18 3AG Commissioned: 1970
Back to Enfield and the Lea, this time to the point where the North Circular surges across the valley. And also back in time because burning waste's not new, this place has been doing it for over 50 years, indeed it's one of the oldest Energy from Waste facilities in Europe. So far more than 21 million tonnes of rubbish have been diverted from landfill by the Edmonton EcoPark, and by now managers must realise that branding it an 'EcoPark' is fooling nobody. Again it's not especially close to where anyone lives, more where they come for out of town shopping, car parts or banqueting. And again it's in the process of being expanded, or rather significantly updated, because the original facilities are unsurprisingly nearing the end of their useful life.
The chimney on the old bit has two tiny prongs like something you'd plug into a continental socket. The two chimneys on the new bit are much thinner and almost pristine white, for now. Down below, beneath a footballpitchsworth of solar panels, can be seen a row of identical shuttered gates numbered from 1 to 13. Large megadustcarts arrive regularly at the front gate with muck to unload and take them round the back, but not (quite) yet into the new Resource Recovery Facility at EcoPark South. The most recent confirmed innovation is the opening of a Reuse and Recycling Centre (aka 'the council tip') which allows public access onto the site for the first time, but I hadn't brought any rubbish of my own so I didn't risk that.
5) SELCHP(30 MW) Type: Bioenergy Fuel: Municipal Solid Waste Location: Landmann Way, South Bermondsey SE14 5RS Commissioned: 1994
SELCHP stands for South East London Combined Heat and Power and is a waste incineration plant tucked into the railwaylands west of Deptford. It was set up by three local authorities to deflect unrecyclabes from landfill, a very worthy cause, and has been doing that for three hungry decades. You've probably seen it from the train on the way out of London Bridge, a large industrial shed with a thin chimney rising forth... much like the rest of the top five. Pass by on the Overground and you'll additionally see a dark cluster of giant downward vents in a box on the side, much like someone cut the tops off half a dozen rockets.
This is the only one of the five I've actually been inside, courtesy of Open House, while decked out in safety gloves and hi-vis for an incredibly memorable walkthrough. We followed a maze of walkways and landings to visit the infill hoppers, the rag-filled bunker, the main control room, the incineration grate and (through a thick glass window) the furnace with its raging flames. The whiff was pretty terrible in places but don't let me put you off, it was amazing to gain access to the belly of the beast and see where the contents of a binbag might ultimately end up. However it says a lot about the inefficiency of production that burning all this waste generates only a tiny fraction of the energy generated by the gas belcher in Enfield. In terms of energy production and energy consumption, London's still a world away from net zero.
n.b. Only four other London power stations appear in the government's database and they produce significantly less electricity. In 6th place are the wind turbines in Dagenham (6 MW) and the other three are solar arrays in Cranham, Crossness and Beckton (3 MW, 1½ MW, ½ MW).
n.b. Ten years ago Barking Power Station would have been top of the list, capable of generating 1000 MW of electricity, but that's fully decommissioned and lined up as the future site of the City of London's wholesale markets. The capital's new number 1 doesn't even make the national top 50.
n.b. Greenwich Power Station has a capacity of 155 MW so is arguably in second place in this list. However it exists as a standby for London Underground's power supply in case of emergency loss, not to feed the National Grid, so it's not in the DUKES database and I've disregarded it here.
